


On The Nature Of Daylight

by fairyminseok



Series: To Dance Is To Fly Part 1: Chained [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Ballet, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Violins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8524696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyminseok/pseuds/fairyminseok
Summary: Drabble #3 of "To Dance is To Fly" Part 1: Chained, a fic in which Jongin leaps through the sky in chase of ribbons and Baekhyun tethers himself to the ground in search of silence.





	

The sun doesn't shine in the basement of the academy. It's blocked out by walls, by the darkness of lights dimmed and the ground overhead. The lights down here don't work well either, burnt out and flickering and covering the studio with a kind of shadow driven atmosphere. 

Jongin finds contentment in the darkness. In the solitude where he can tie his ribbons up to his knees, where he can adjust his tutu into position and dance in his pointe shoes. A rush of air, of emotion that he lacks in his reality; the freedom to be himself though it's in a place where he'll never get to fly. 

Jongin wants to fly free in the sunlight, wants to be the ballerina he's always dreamed of, but that's not possible in his world. Not possible when he's got the wrong parts to be girly, has the wrong world around him telling him what he should wear to be accepted. 

_You can't be a ballerina, darling_ He remembers his mother saying when he was a child and she'd sat him down to explain why he couldn't wear tutus and be like the little girls in his classes. _You're a boy. That's impossible._

Yet Jongin knows that he doesn't want to be a girl. He is what he is and he's pleased with it, happy even, but he does know that what he wants is to be like those girls. Jongin didn't understand then why he could not, and he doesn't understand now. 

Jongin dances with a grace that most men do not, dances with the emotion of someone who has struggled, and someone who knows exactly what it is to be heartbroken. And not heartbroken in the romantic way, he doesn't know what that it is yet, but heartbroken the only way a society can break a heart. Shunned, silenced and everything he should not be, and yet Jongin knows that he is beautiful. 

He has felt wrong, he has felt disgusting and he has felt backwards for the things he loves and the things he wants to put on his own body but he has never once believed he was ugly. Here in the basement, with the studio mirror cracking and the sunlight outside failing to reach the dusty corridors of both Jongin's consciousness and physical being, he feels like a caged animal. 

Beautiful and full of strength yet locked away, the truth hidden from the world around him. Jongin stares into the mirror with a face of resignation, of fear and of a deep understanding he should not yet have of the world. 

A knock at the door interrupts his thoughts and Jongin tears off the tutu and the ribbons with ferocity, slipping out of his shoes. He piles the clothing up in his bag and chances a glance towards the mirror. Normal again. 

He's surprised that someone is down in the basements, that someone would leave the sunlit rooms of the upper studios for the dingy, broken down and sullen rooms that scatter throughout the lower levels, but he opens the door with a shy smile set into place. 

"Hello."

Jongin recognizes the face of the boy standing awkwardly at the door, not because he knows him but because this is the same boy that had knocked him over in the hallway during last week's recital. 

"You dance, right?"


End file.
